New Orleans Pelicans ranked 13th in national TV games for 2024-25 NBA season

The NBA world has quickly forgotten about Zion Williamson and the New Orleans Pelicans. Despite being one of the few teams who made a major addition in the offseason by trading for star guard Dejounte Murray, it seems that the league and its followers are unimpressed with this new iteration of the team.

For evidence of this, look no further than the NBA's announcement of the nationally televised games for the upcoming 2024-25 season. The Pelicans landed in a four-way tie for the 13th-most national TV matchups with nine, along with the Memphis Grizzlies, Los Angeles Clippers, and Indiana Pacers.

Ahead of the Pelicans are the San Antonio Spurs (13), Oklahoma City Thunder (15), Milwaukee Bucks (17), Minnesota Timberwolves (18), Phoenix Suns (19), Philadelphia 76ers (21), Denver Nuggets (22), Dallas Mavericks (23), New York Knicks (24), Golden State Warriors (24), Boston Celtics (26), and Los Angeles Lakers (27).

What were the networks thinking?

The Pelicans are hardly the only team with a legitimate gripe against the national TV schedule; there are baffling decisions up and down the entire calendar. With the amount of talent and parity in the league now, there are numerous squads that deserve to be shown more. This season, six different organization only have one national game: the Washington Wizards, Toronto Raptors, Portland Trail Blazers, Detroit Pistons, Charlotte Hornets, and Brooklyn Nets. It's absolutely ludicrous that fans without League Pass will only get to see talents like LaMelo Ball, Cade Cunningham, and Scottie Barnes once this year.

The Houston Rockets and the Orlando Magic, two rising teams with burgeoning young stars, will have a combined eight national games. The Sacramento Kings, a postseason participant in the last two seasons that just added an All-Star in DeMar DeRozan, have six.

On the other side of the coin are teams that might have a few too many national spots. There's almost no reason that the Clippers sans Paul George should have as many as the Pelicans. They still have two future Hall-of-Famers on board in Kawhi Leonard and James Harden, but how confident are we that they'll both play in all nine of LA's nationally televised games?

It makes sense that the NBA is investing a lot into Victor Wembanyama, an obvious superstar and likely future face of the league, but 13 might prove to be a bit much for a team that only won 22 total games last season. It's also a good move to highlight LeBron James and Stephen Curry in the twilight of their primes, but a combined 51 national games seems a bit much.

For the Pelicans, it's hard not to feel disrespected. Aside from their lack of center depth, this is the most talented roster that New Orleans has sported in years, and, yet, they have less national games than they did in both 2022-23 (18) and 2023-24 (12). The scapegoat will be Zion's injury proclivity, but the man played 70 games last season. Alas, the only thing the Pelicans can do now is use this chip on their shoulders to motivate them to prove the networks wrong. Hopefully, they'll have these TV executives scrambling to flex them into national spots in the second half of the season.